


A Poisonous Garden

by linaerys



Category: Vampire Diaries
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-13
Updated: 2009-09-13
Packaged: 2017-10-03 10:45:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17189
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linaerys/pseuds/linaerys
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stefan and Damon hunt each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	A Poisonous Garden

Fifteen years.

It was the woods of Montana last time. Pointless arguments. "When you make it look like a wolf did it, the ranchers go after them."

Damon smirked, sharp and dangerous and out of place here under the big skies, the cold, unfriendly sun. "Now you're worried about the wolves too?"

It was that smile, more than anything, that told Stefan that Damon wasn't going to change, not this time around. He left then, feeling like a coward. He could have told someone, let a mob of angry ranchers do what he couldn't do on his own. He told himself if it needed to be done, he'd do it himself. But then he left in the night, not brave enough even to tell Damon he was going.

The time before that, Damon was the one who left. Because Damon may be the more powerful predator, but Stefan has ways of controlling him, if he's willing to use them again.

For Elena he is.

Damon takes his rest in Stefan's bed when Stefan's at school, and he's waiting there when Stefan gets home, hair tousled, twirling a knife he doesn't need between his fingers. Uncle Zach has a collection of knives, some of silver, some of steel, legacies, likely, of the specters that haunt their family.

"Do you think he means to kill you in your sleep?" Damon asks. "I'd wake up at his footfalls, but you don't have my abilities."

"I've been meaning to tell you," Stefan drawls, "that fog thing is really stupid. Looks like a bad movie effect."

Damon shrugs fluidly. "Why should I be subtle? I'm not trying to blend." He gets up off the bed and walks toward Stefan. "You shouldn't either."

Stefan steels himself. He has to start this some time. The sooner he does, the fewer bodies in Mystic Falls. "I've thought about it," he says. "I'll hunt with you."

"I don't believe you." Damon smirks, but there's a hint of doubt in his eyes. Or hope.

"Not here, though. Not in Mystic Falls."

"I see. Away from your precious girlfriend."

Stefan shrugs, but doesn't look away. "Do you want this?" He spreads his hands.

Damon brings his fingers up to his lips. "Don't fuck with me, brother." And then he's off, leaping through the window and out into the woods.

The river that feeds the falls traces south, over other cataracts, though none as dramatic as the one that gives their town its name. Stefan hasn't run like this, through these woods, since they were both boys, before. Damon is a flash in the distance, teasing Stefan by staying almost at the limit of his vision. The running is a pleasure, even though Stefan is half starved. A pleasure he's denied himself, and for good reason. Indulging one appetite makes the others harder to ignore.

It's maybe an hour later when Damon lets Stefan catch him. "You're out of shape," he says, with a casual backhand to Stefan's chest that almost sends him flying. "We're near Maris college now. Lots of tasty coeds."

"No one says coeds anymore, Damon."

The darkness gathers early in the forest, pooling in the hollows at the roots of trees. The temperature drops as well, although that could be Damon. Before he could do his tricks with the fog, he could already affect temperature.

"Whatever. Shall we hunt?"

Stefan swallows his nervousness. "Yeah," he lies. "There's a picnic area near here. Couples come after dark. Let's go this way."

He chooses a random direction, anything that takes them away from the Maris campus. They walk at human speed, taking up the time between now and twilight, until the first star winks on overhead.

"There's no picnic, is there?" says Damon, low and dangerous, and suddenly far too close behind him, when Stefan stops and makes a show of sniffing the air.

"I can't believe you fell for that." Stefan steels himself as he tries to keep his tone more sarcastic than scared. "I'm not hunting with you, unless we're hunting deer, and there's plenty of those out here."

"I'm not hunting deer." If Damon had breath, Stefan would feel it now, ghosting on his neck. "I could hunt you, though. You owe me a hunt." His lips brush against Stefan's ear. "I still remember what your blood tastes like."

"I won't run," says Stefan. He clenches his jaw, and Damon brushes the muscle with a fingertip. He opens his lips over Stefan's vein.

At the first prick of teeth, Stefan takes off running. He tells himself it's to better draw Damon to him, but his heart is hammering, moving the thin supply of blood in his veins to muscle and sinew to keep him moving. He wants this; he fears it. Same old story.

Damon catches him in a clearing, leaping from above to pin Stefan to the earth. And then he's biting, tearing the flesh of Stefan's neck. Stefan remembers, with a sharpness like it was yesterday, how good it is to feed, especially on something with two legs, but he'd forgotten the pleasure alloyed with pain of being fed upon. This feels like the first time.

Black fingers of oblivion reach out, clouding his vision. Something deep and primitive in him starts to fight back. He grips Damon's head and pulls him back so they're facing each other. Damon's eyes are shadowed with hunger. He licks bloodied lips. "You taste so good, brother. Come on. Take it back." He arches his neck.

Damon's blood tastes hot and rich, like the last human Stefan fed from, only more so. He tastes what Damon's been doing these last fifteen years, the hunts, the appetites sated, mixed well with loneliness, and even a touch of despair.

Damon touches his fingers to the wound on Stefan's neck, and pulls back the last few drops of blood from skin already healed. He sits up, straddling Stefan's hips, and feels at his own neck. The mixed blood he feeds to Stefan, who licks it off greedily.

Then he's pulling Stefan down on top of him. When they're apart, blood is life and satiation, and everything that matters to either one of them, but when they're together, it's a whetstone to sharper pleasures still.

The stiff fabric of Stefan's jeans rips easily under Damon's hands, and he's stroking Stefan, rubbing them together and pulling Stefan down for kisses and bites, until Stefan can't tell what is feeding and what is this, this _thing_ that pulls them back together like magnets.

There's something uncertain, even diffident, in Damon's eyes when they pull apart. "I . . .," he says, but then the mask is back. "I'm still hungry."

And he's off into the woods, a flash of white skin and black hair, hard edges in this soft night, before he disappears entirely.

This wasn't the end, thirty years ago: Stefan's face in forest dirt, his body singing with pain and pleasure. But it was the beginning of the end.

Stefan gets up slowly. The bruises and cuts that Damon gave him will be healed before he's half way home.

On the way he kills a deer. Its blood tastes like sunlight and green leaves.

Somewhere else, Damon is stalking and killing a human. Stefan tries not to think what her blood must taste like.

Thirty years ago, Damon told him, "I lose myself with you," when they lay entwined, their blood and sweat caking them together.

And then he left. Thirty years ago, Stefan would have done anything to make him stay. He walked the night for a year like a dead man, hoping to see Damon's face around a corner, wanting to die for missing him.

He barely lived through it last time, but this time it's different. This time it's for Elena and Mystic Falls, not for Damon, and the taste of his blood still on Stefan's lips. For Elena.


End file.
